The Desert: a Better Defense

Secretary of the Interior Donald P. Hodel misses the point when he says that reports of damage to the California desert have been exaggerated--he misses several points, actually, or chooses to over-look them. Hodel recently spent three days touring the 25-million-acre California desert region to promote the good job that he says the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has done as the nation’s chief desert administrator.

This is another way for Hodel to express his opposition to the legislation by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) to turn the management of a considerable portion of BLM territory over to the National Park Service. The Cranston measure would expand Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments and make them national parks, create a new 1.5-million-acre Mojave National Park and designate 4.5 million acres of the desert territory as wilderness.

After Hodel’s tour, much of it by helicopter, the secretary said that he saw little sign of human damage to the desert. But he could have found out much more by talking to Bureau of Land Management naturalist Kristin H. Berry, as did The Times’ Louis Sahagun. The visitor has to know what to look for, she said, adding: “In fact, the desert habitat is deteriorating and being destroyed at a rapid rate by off-road vehicles, development of urban communities, and sheep and cattle grazing, among other things.”

Cranston’s bill is opposed by the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the California Desert Conservation Area created by Congress in 1976 after considerable negotiation and compromise between conservation groups and user organizations. Both the bureau and the National Park Service are agencies of the Interior Department, but they have markedly different directives from Congress. The Park Service’s mandate is to preserve the nation’s prime natural areas while also making them available for visitation and enjoyment. The Bureau of Land Management is wedded to a hybrid, self-conflicting concept known as multiple use. While the bureau is supposed to offer protection of the best natural areas, it also is mandated to facilitate and encourage the economic exploitation of its lands.

Beyond arguments over what damage has been done to the desert so far is the larger issue of pressures that the desert will face in the future. About 13 million people already live within a few hours’ drive of the desert, and population growth is accelerating. The best way to guard against future degradation of the desert on a broad scale is to have the best portions of it under the more protective banner of the National Park Service, just as is the case in alpine mountain regions, grasslands and places of historic significance.

In a sense this is a massive federal turf war. However, a number of officials within the National Park Service cannot publicly express their support of the Cranston legislation because their boss, Hodel, already has sided with the Bureau of Land Management. The bureau is defensive about the job that it has done, and is protective of its own desert plan. On occasion the bureau has been unfairly accused of not adequately safeguarding the desert, given the meager tools that it has been allowed by Congress for the job. But that is the point. The higher visibility and stature of national park status, and its more specific mandate, are bound to offer greater long-term protection.